#metaphysicals

As virtuous men pass mildly away,      And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say,      "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,      No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'There profanation of our joys      To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;      Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres,      Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lover's love      --Whose soul is sense-- cannot admit Of absense , 'cause it doth remove      The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,      That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind,      Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,      Though I must go, endure not yet A breach m but and expansion,      Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so      As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, are fix'd foot, makes no show      To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,      Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it,      And grows erect, as that comes home.

Having finished a novel last night, I plucked down from my shelf Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan; thinking that it would make light but intellectual reading. Finding, at first, while I read it on the tram, that academic musings on the promotion of the social agenda of the early Church of England by those English poets were perhaps too dense for morning reading. Pressing on, however, it became more and more fascinating; and a sense of though-filled pursuit renewed.